When I started watching 24's first season, it was a great show. Great concept. Great plot. But then, more viewers started watching, and the plots, writing, acting, all started to slip. It's still a fun show, but for a show that's supposed to be based in reality, it falls short in too many ways. Jack Bauer, President Palmer, President Logan, Kim Bauer, Tony Almeda, Michelle Dessler, Chloe, Edgar, Curtis, and anyone else on this mind-numbing, over-acted, poorly-written drama, watch your ass.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

24 Season 7: Tony Almeida, Resident Zombie

Before the news of Tony returning broke, I thought that 24 fans were awfully lenient with the writing staff. Now, however, it appears that most suffer from the ostrich syndrome – where you stick your head in the sand to ignore what's going on. Everywhere I read, fans are rejoicing that Tony is back... from the dead. Yes, he was dead. Don't let anyone on the 24 tell you otherwise. Don't listen to the lies they're going to spin... especially when Executive Producer Howard Gordon says something like:

"That's something, obviously, we're going to have to explain away," Gordon says. "Hopefully, in the spirit of creating a good show and creating an interesting season, people will allow the fun [of '24']."

In the spirit (pun intended, I'm sure) of creating an interesting season? Let me translate that for you – in the interest of me keeping my job because we got our asses handed to us for the crap we put out there last year.

I'm bewildered that these fans are all excited about Tony returning. Really, I am. Why? BECAUSE HE WAS DEAD!!! This isn't a soap opera. This is a show that's based on the reality of a 24-hour timeline AND the notion that terrorist attacks could happen on US soil. But now we're supposed to believe that a character that was killed off in season five is just about to magically reappear?

I'm not sure how Mr. Gordon and his crew will explain what's plainly listed in the 24 recaps:

Season Five: 7:00 - 8:00 pm
7:59 P.M. – Jack enters the clinic and finds Tony and Burke on the ground. Gasping his last breath of life, Tony tells Jack that he couldn’t do it. Jack clutches Tony’s head. Tony dies, and Jack cries with him still in his arms.

Season Five: 8:00 - 9:00 pm
8:00 P.M. – As the medic workers wrap up Tony’s body, Audrey comes to tell Jack that Henderson has escaped. However, Chloe was able to decrypt a file on his computer and she found an intelligence broker named Collette Stenger who is a known associate of Bierko.

Tony dies in Jack's arms. Next episode, Tony's body is being wrapped up by medical workers.

He's dead. Tony is gone. Character written off of the show.

How can you be excited about this? This opens the flood gates of allowing the writers to do ANYTHING they want. This doesn't make for interesting television. It reeks of publicity stunt and ratings grabbing. Ultimately, it's going to make them all look like fools (if that's not too late, already).

If you're a fan and you're excited about Tony the un-dead agent, then just admit the show is lost and insanely silly. Then I won't want to sucker-punch you so bad.

10 comments:

"It really ranks among Tony's other resurrections," executive producer Howard Gordon says. "I mean, he was blown up in a blast and was supposed to die there. He was shot in the neck in the third episode of season three, shot in the aorta at point-blank range, and he was basically back at the controls eight hours later.

"So in the nine lives of Tony Almeida, this is just another chapter, hopefully the most interesting of them."

No argument that bringing him back is going to be ridiculous. I can only say I like this because the new characters on the show just flat out suck. The only good "new" character was Curtis, and they killed him off in the premiere last season. Everyone else pretty much blows. There are no more hard asses like Chappelle or Mason (realistic characters). Instead we get a few people that appear tough on the surface, but always give into a 45 second speech of Jack hypnosis. We know Jack, we need to trust you. These people don't exist! At least Tony will tell someone to F off.

Oh - I can say that Tom's character grew on me last season. He seemed like someone I could picture in the white house.

To answer your question, yes, I've given up on the show. I'm prepared to be bored. If it can be NOT horrific, it will exceed my expectations.

But it's also obviously ridiculous if you read all te stuff on the Internet.

Though, when you think about it, if you've only seen the episodes and didn't follow much around it, I think Tony coming back might actually be recepted as realistic. It depends on how they're going to bring him back, ofcourse.

I'm just hoping that with Carlos' return, wait, KNOWING, that with Carlos' return, the acting level will be going way up again. And it will have me watching 24 again, 'cause I didn't see last season (though read about it and understood it sucked big time) seeing how S5 already sucked for me. There were too many loose ends and unexplainable things.

But I have faith that Carlos wouldn't agree to returning if it wasn't for something really good.

And, well, don't we all know that Almeida is God, seeing how often he returned?

This blows. Tony was KILLED--everybody in charge of this show stated he was MANY times, there's nothing vague or mysterious about it and wheher or not he got a clock has nothing to do with it. The writers are out of GOOD ideas so they dish up this crap. So I'll bet they'll just treat us like we're stupid and say "he wasn't really dead", in that arrogant way they have and expect us to accept it and continue draw their big paychecks that they obviously don't deserve. Kids in junior high can write better plots than this "guy back from the dead turns evil" garbage.

So long 24, I remember when you were a really good show, a long time ago.